a. Field of the Invention
The instant disclosure relates generally to elongate medical devices for use with a remote catheter guidance system (RCGS), including elongate medical devices suitable for both manual use and automated use with an RCGS.
b. Background Art
It is known to use electrophysiology (EP) catheters for a variety of diagnostic and/or therapeutic medical procedures to correct conditions such as atrial arrhythmia, including for example, ectopic atrial tachycardia, atrial fibrillation, and atrial flutter. Arrhythmia can create a variety of dangerous conditions including irregular heart rates, loss of synchronous atrioventricular contractions and stasis of blood flow which can lead to a variety of ailments.
In a typical EP procedure, a physician manipulates a catheter through a patient's vasculature to, for example, a patient's heart. The catheter typically carries one or more electrodes that may be used for mapping, ablation, diagnosis, and the like. Once at the target tissue site, the physician commences diagnostic and/or therapeutic procedures, for example, ablative procedures such as radio frequency (RF), microwave, cryogenic, laser, chemical, acoustic/ultrasound or high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) ablation, to name a few different sources of ablation energy. The resulting lesion may disrupt undesirable electrical pathways and thereby limit or prevent stray electrical signals that can lead to arrhythmias. Such procedures can require precise control of the catheter during navigation to and delivery of therapy to the target tissue site.
Robotic catheter systems are known to facilitate precise control. Robotic catheter systems generally carry out (as a mechanical surrogate) input commands of a clinician or other end-user to deploy, navigate and manipulate a catheter and/or an introducer or sheath for a catheter or other elongate medical instrument, for example, a robotic catheter system described, depicted, and/or claimed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/347,811 entitled “ROBOTIC CATHETER SYSTEM,” hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety as though fully set forth herein. Such robotic catheter systems include a variety of actuation mechanisms, such as electric motors, for controlling translation and deflection of the catheter and associated sheath.
A variety of catheter form factors for robotic manipulation and associated robotic actuation mechanisms are known. For example, as described in the above-referenced U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/347,811, a catheter may be provided in a cartridge specifically designed for use with a robotic system. The robotic system, in turn, may contain a manipulation structure specifically designed for use with the catheter cartridge form factor. However, such a catheter cartridge can be more difficult to guide manually than a traditional manual catheter handle. In another example, such as disclosed in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2007/0198008, entitled “ROBOTIC SURGICAL SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR AUTOMATED THERAPY DELIVERY,” hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety, a traditional manual catheter handle may be controlled by a robotic manipulator manipulating the same actuation mechanisms that a physician would manipulate during manual use. Although such a system allows for robotic and manual manipulation of the same catheter form factor, it can require that the robotic manipulator be specifically designed to manipulate the manual catheter steering mechanism. Because different manual catheter handles may have different types, numbers, and placements of steering mechanisms, the use of such a robotic system may be limited by the design of the manipulator mechanism.
There is therefore a need for an improved interface for coupling a catheter to a RCGS while allowing a high degree of manual manipulation of the catheter by a physician.